BUSINESS January 14, 2007 Company Clinics Cut Health Costs By MILT FREUDENHEIM Frustrated by health costs, large employers are adding primary care medical centers in their offices. Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company Privacy Policy
I dont know about others in the group but for me there has to be greater demand for health in Ireland than the current system is supplying. The idea of company clinics is interesting. Peer Effects would also surely kick in if more people in the office started taking their check-ups etc.,. I wonder do IBEC and ISME have policies or plans with regard to using health benefits to attract and retain staff. Again, if you think of ideas such as cue-theory and other behavioural/psychological features of health it makes a lot of sense to bring health behaviours more in the fore-front.
The NY Times also featured some research recently on how pharmacists could play a greater role in "diabetes coaching" by providing guidance on self-care at the point of pharmaceuticals purchase. I know there are arguments about too much interference with people's lives, but these types of ideas are really worth debating in the context of the research here.
4 comments:
Guinness' Brewery were well know for providing health care for its workers - certain illnesses associated with alcohol were prevalent.So too did some of the well known Quaker owned businesses in Ireland.
Kanika Kapur has done a lot of work on health insurance provided by firms in the US including a paper she presented on in the Institute last year and there seems to be a huge literature on this. I dont know how much has been done on actual health care provision by firms.
it would be interesting to ascertain why businesses have not been too bothered with this. They obvioulsy don't believe that it is a feasible method of increasing productivity and/or that it is too costly. Purely off the top of my mind from watching telly but dont some countries have work based aerobic fitness activities. On a milder note, i have seen quite of bit of office-health stuff of late including for example healthy back interventions.
interesting. i wonder why bottled water has become so universal in offices all round the world. Im sure it must be based on some arguments related to hydration, energy and productivity.
There is a lot of debate on this within the context of the Corporate Social Responsibility literature.
Post a Comment